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How This Coach Built A $500K/Month Business Teaching The Art Of Automated Digital Marketing

This article is more than 7 years old.

The world’s best digital marketers all share one thing in common: the very strategies, processes, and tactics they sell to their clients, they have proven by first building successful businesses themselves.

That’s because what makes a great digital marketer is someone who has actually been in the trenches. They know how difficult it is to acquire those initial customers. They understand the challenges business owners face because they have faced those same challenges. And that’s the common ground that ultimately attracts those looking to invest in high ticket digital marketing strategies and sales funnels.

Russell Ruffino is a case-in-point example. Founder and CEO of Clients on Demand, he has successfully built a consulting business that drives $500,000 a month by educating other business owners and thought leaders on the art of communicating their value and attracting the right types of clients.

Russell Ruffino

“One of the biggest lessons for me was the difference between information and transformation,” said Ruffino. “There are plenty of ‘how-to’ courses on sale for anywhere from $100 to $2,000. But at those prices, people tend to buy that information on a whim, and then they never take action. It’s an impulse buy. People don’t do anything, and then of course, they don’t get results. Also, the people who sell those programs are usually enrolling thousands of people at a time, so it’s difficult (if not impossible) to provide world-class support to anyone.”

Ruffino took that insight and decided to focus on selling programs that would be truly transformative. They asked themselves, “What would happen if we raised our prices, worked with fewer clients, and focused on providing a VIP experience to each and every customer so that they could create amazing breakthroughs in their business?” Thus, Clients on Demand was born.

“After I changed that one core strategy,” said Ruffino, “really focusing on the select group of clients that were serious about driving business results for themselves, my business skyrocketed to $200,000 per month—and the business has more than doubled since then. And it’s not just increased revenue that makes me happy, it’s the fact that I am working with people who truly want to learn and improve. It’s not enjoyable to invest so much time into a program that the majority of people don’t finish or never implement what they’ve learned. But working closely with people and seeing them succeed is an entirely different experience. It’s far more rewarding.”

But how did Ruffino find these high-ticket clients in the first place? He took the time to deeply understand what his target customers were struggling with, and then catered his materials to each of those pain points.

“You have to remember you’re talking to human beings. A clear example of what we do to acquire customers is we run hyper-targeted Facebook ads to a webinar registration page, and then we let those webinars teach and educate these leads on the value of our marketing and sales strategies,” he said.

Ruffino certainly isn’t the only entrepreneur who sees the value in using live webinars to convert cold leads into loyal customers.

In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute, “85% of B2B marketers said lead generation is their most important content marketing goal.” And even more shocking, “43% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy that is not documented.”

This speaks directly to one of the primary pain points Ruffino and many other successful digital marketers and business coaches address with their clients: the value of having a process. Even setting up a simple but documented process like running targeted Facebook ads to a webinar registration page, and then using that webinar to acquire new clients is a strategy you can measure and refine over time.

“In a month we will have around 1,200 people register to one of our webinars, and from the percentage that convert into clients we will make about half a million dollars. That’s a very clear ROI and something we have taken the time to get perfect—which is exactly what we want to teach our clients. There is an art to communicating your value,” said Ruffino.

At the end of the day though, Ruffino attributes his success to setting very clear goals and then measuring whether or not those goals are being met.

“Once you have the big goals set, you can then chunk them down into smaller more attainable goals. Sometimes I see our clients get intimidated by the big goals, which is why I always try to bring things back to the micro: what can you do right now in order to drive a small result, that will ultimately ladder up to the bigger win?” said Ruffino.

The story he always shares with his clients is to never settle for conventional wisdom. Processes can always be improved. Marketing can always be more focused. But it takes time and energy to learn and implement those processes, and he wants to be the one to teach them.